blueforce's Journal: new DSL

I got new DSL today. 1.5M and it's sweet.

I switched from Verizon to Verizon.

When I moved here a couple of years ago, Verizon didn't sell DSL direct. 768k ADSL from Verizon was only available through a local ISP that charged me $35 per month. Verizon charged me $35 per month too. Ugh.

Adelphia cable recently went tearing through the countryside installing fiber and rolling out cable broadband to the residents to a warm reception. I was all set to switch to cable and save $30 per month and what to my wondering eyes should appear? A note in the mail from Verizon letting me know that DSL is available in my area and for only $30 per month. Hmmph. "Honey, we should get DSL!"

I Called Verizon and explained my situation to a nice lady. The nice lady said she sees my information and will take care of switching it over and cancelling my acct. with robber baron third party for me.

All went as planned until this evening. It turned out to have a small hiccup.

My old ISP as of this morning auth'd by MAC address even though the connectivity was coming from Verizon. Verizon uses PPPoE. Funny, no one mentioned that. I came home from work expecting it to work and it didn't work. No one mentioned that. That step wasn't in the install kit.

Call tech support? Hmm. I imagine my half of the conversation to sound something like "No, I can't connect. Through a router. Gentoo. It's Linux. Why not? But it worked this morning."

I called anyway. Ugh. I don't have the will to recap that conversation - it could have been about 47 minutes shorter if the robot would have just said "We use PPPoE, you'll need a user ID and password." instead of "It says on step 3 to uninstall your Network Interface Card driver and reboot Windows.". So, there I am.... making "bing bing bing boong" reboot sounds into the phone to humor the kid and telling him I still can't connect in the hopes that, soon, I would end up at a higher level tech support to tell them that my modem connects to something but won't give me a routable IP. It worked. His supervisor got me a uid and pwd.

My DSL works again - twice as fast at half the cost. Life is grand.